


First Date

by Davechicken



Series: The Pilot and his Knight [8]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-09
Updated: 2016-03-09
Packaged: 2018-05-25 17:45:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6204763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poe decides it's time they go on their first date. Kylo is, understandably, nervous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Date

_No one will know who you are_ , Poe had said. He’d smiled when he said it, and if he was aware of how that was both utterly compelling and frankly humiliating, it didn’t show. 

Nobody would know. They wouldn’t know, because _Kylo Ren_ had been a man behind a mask. A dark cloud of engineered presence, and a tall, dark-haired human with a penchant for colourless clothes was just another tall, dark-haired human. Unless they knew about his saber, or recognised Poe, he would be a non-entity.

It was both reassuring (in the ‘no one will call me a genocidal monster’ way) and the worst thing ever (in the ‘how am I holding up against my family’s legacy if they think I’m just a normal person with a fascination for breadsticks’ way). 

And also it was a **DATE**.

Like a real date. Like what real people went on. Not masked Dark Jedi. Even his parents… had they dated? He didn’t remember it happening, but he’d also likely been farmed off to Luke or Chewie or Wedge or any number of Rebellion aunts and uncles while they tried to be normal people (and inevitably failed). 

A real thing. Which meant this was serious. Which meant it was serious to _Poe_. Kylo knew it was serious to **him** , because he’d never - well. He’d never wanted to be with anyone else, so of course it was. And on some level he worried if that meant he was wrong inside, considering how many people had strings of loves, or partial-loves, or at least attempted-loves. Kylo had never felt the need, or the pull, or the safety-danger in anyone else before. He worried that meant he was falling in love with love, and not Poe, but when he tried to ever imagine anyone else in his arms it just didn’t work.

He was Poe’s, and that was that.

And this… okay, so he could be reading too much into it. Poe probably had taken lots of people out on dates. That familiar sting of _jealousy_ swirled again, and Kylo picked up his glass of wine (Poe’s choice) and tried not to glug it down in a panic.

He was - and always would be - terrified that things meant more to _him_ than they did to **Poe**. Things normally meant more to him. That’s why he’d Fallen, after all. The world was dialled up way past the safety measures inside his head, and he had no real middle ground inside. 

Or… hadn’t had, He was trying to improve on that: step by step.

“You know what you want to eat?” Poe asked.  


 _Everything. Nothing. You?_ “The… uh… risotto… looks…?” Ah, crap. Kylo had no idea what the right thing to order was. He’d thought about waiting to see what Poe picked, but Poe had to go and put him on the spot.

“Everything they do is good,” Poe reassured him, reaching over to put a hand on his.  


Kylo **FLUSHED**. From the slightest glance of hand to his, all the way up his arm like a poison darting into his heart, and sending out nova-flares of heat all through his body. Oh damn, oh double damn. “Mostly I like the look of the appetisers,” he admitted, words coming out to stop him just making a low, whining, pathetic noise.

 _Have some self control, Ren_ , he said to himself. _Stop acting like a teenager_.

“Yeah? Some of those sharing platters look great…” Poe kept hold of his hand, and ran his finger down the list. “But there’s way too many to choose. Guess I should have taken you somewhere we already had an idea what to get, huh?”  


“We could always just order… that.”  


“Huh?”  


Kylo bit his lip. “Just appetisers. I mean, a lot of them. If we like them more. They’ll still let us, won’t they?”

“And share?”  


Kylo nodded. “If you’d like.”

“I think it’s a great idea,” Poe said, and the way his eyes lit up meant it was _true_. He squeezed and let go of Kylo’s hand, and then turned the list of food so it was at ninety degrees to them both, so they could read together.   


Poe picked a lot of finger food. Even in somewhere as upmarket as this, it was messy and involved and would mean their dignity got left in smears on fingers and lips. He also had very diverse tastes, where Kylo had lived off First Order blandness for so long that his tongue had forgotten what spices and flavours really were. They probably ordered too much food, but Poe said they could take the rest home with them.

When they’d done picking and choosing, the menus went and it was just the two of them, plus the bottle of wine and their two glasses. Kylo just kept staring at Poe with a soul-deep longing that made him giddy all over again. He felt like he was really part of civilisation, now. A person who could walk in here and order three - or seven - plates of wings and breads and dips and cheeses and everything else. Someone who might ask for a bag to take the leftovers home. Someone who could sit over a table in public with his lover, and who could talk about things like _holos_ and _race results_ and _engine mods_ and _basically anything that came into either of their heads_. 

Poe had that way of pulling words out of him, of making him open up - about **anything** \- and he’d find he’d spoken for longer than he had in years before he realised what he’d done. And he hadn’t been _Kylo_ , and he hadn’t been _Ben_ , and he hadn’t been a Jedi, Dark Jedi, proto-Sith, son of a politician, son of a smuggler, son of the Rebellion, minion of Darkness, or any other label that might be attached to him, might be used to frame his narrative, or explain his existence. He’d just been **him**.

A man, in a nice restaurant, ordering way too much food to enjoy with his boyfriend. He felt eyes on him, from time to time, but when he glanced up he saw nothing but quiet smiles and shy looks away.

No one thought he was a monster. No one thought he was anything but happy. Not a man stuck between good intentions and dark inclinations… or maybe they did. But that’s what _everyone_ was. And that was okay.

Kylo let his eyes close for just a moment, and committed this time - this precise moment - deep inside as another holorecord to remember. Something to call up when he felt low, something to bring back to his mind when things didn’t go to plan. Something - maybe one day - to tell as a story.

 _Their first date_. He hoped every subsequent one felt as good as this. And he was going to kiss the hell out of Poe when they got out of here, he really was. 


End file.
